Literature – This Jolly Beggar

In Praise of Dostoevsky

You see through me,

Dostoevsky, you leave no light

between truth and reality

and a woman’s heart (like a man’s)

lays bared before your demands

that life be lived not in the shadows

but where madness, danger, evil threaten:

and faced, leaves no doubt of allegiance

to the God whose truth is love.

Sanaa at dVerse's Poetics asks that we "dip our toes"
into a panegyric: "Plainly speaking, the term “Panegyric,” 
refers to a poem of effusive praise. 
The genre being Greek in origin is closely related to 
both eulogy and ode. Click on Mr. Linky and join in!

A Red, Red Rose (Burns)

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns (1759–1796)

For Cee’s Flower of the Day, June 11, 2021

A Common-Place Jotting: “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (1874-1963)

For Cee's FOTD Challenge

A Common-Place Jotting: Keats

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

A sonnet by John Keats on the melancholy shortness of a day spent away from the city:

To one who has been long in city pent,

         ‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair

         And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart’s content,

         Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

         Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Returning home at evening, with an ear

         Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye

Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,

         He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear

         That falls through the clear ether silently.

Escapist Fiction or Nothing Books for Nobody People

Have you ever been in that mood in an airport bookstore, or maybe when you have insomnia, and you just want a book to read, any book, that makes you forget yourself and while away an hour or two?

Continue reading “Escapist Fiction or Nothing Books for Nobody People”